


to the field where we began

by euphemea



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, M/M, No Recruits, Unhappy Ending, Verdant Wind route, i had a craving for VW dimilix suffering and dimilix week had a "blood" prompt so here we are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:47:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22785091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euphemea/pseuds/euphemea
Summary: Can you still feel regret even when your bones are dust and the earth and sky can no longer weep for you?Lying here, blood and fire dyeing the ground of Gronder red, red,indelibly red, his side seeping heart and loyalty and eons of sacrifice into crimson rivulets that will never leave these once-lush, once-vibrant plains—It’s hard to breathe.~~Dimilix Week Day 5: Blood
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38
Collections: 2020 Dimilix Week





	to the field where we began

**Author's Note:**

> please mind the tags. additional strong warning for felix’s dehumanization of dimitri through some parts of this. 
> 
> thank you to [ryx](%E2%80%9C) for helping me beta!
> 
> this is both my first attempt at dimilix and my first attempt to use this kind of writing style? anyway, thanks for reading!

Felix has known regret. His own, his father’s, the boar’s—they all run together through endless cycles of time, hand in hand in hand across generations, a pointless chase toward an unreachable absolution. 

Can you still feel regret even when your bones are dust and the earth and sky can no longer weep for you?

Lying here, blood and fire dyeing the ground of Gronder red, red, _indelibly red_ , his side seeping heart and loyalty and eons of sacrifice into crimson rivulets that will never leave these once-lush, once-vibrant plains—

It’s hard to breathe. 

All around: havoc, destruction, an unyielding blaze. The tableau that stands is grotesque—an ineffable salting of the earth, a futile sacrifice by a desperate monarch, a horrifying and fitting end. 

Felix should stand up, reach again for his sword, search one more time for that blue, beautifully cobalt cape, royal and ragged and long-lost and hard-won. Their trail ahead and behind lies bloodied, littered with the corpses of friends and allies and enemies, a mass of choice and loss and fealty. Their bones mold the steps of an infinite stairway of vengeance; they pave the way down, down, down to the depths of the seventh circle and beyond, to twisted torment a thousand-fold the entrapment of the living mind. 

The dead are dead, and dead they’ll stay—nothing more than long-gone, imagined guideposts or the solace of a drifting self. The dead cannot seek, cannot want, and yet their presence lingers, lurks, lies latent in the grief of the living.

The living, the boar claims, must carry the regrets of the dead. 

But what, Felix spits, of the living’s own? 

The tang of iron follows him. It dogs their army. It wears its way beyond steel and silver. 

It has chased him through years and days, and only the barest hint of restraint decorates the air between his sword (the king’s lance) and its next foe ( _their_ next prey) as they cut and cut and cut. Long-faded drops weep from their weapons, and the poison of hate turns in Felix’s stomach.

The chains of chivalry and loyalty lay heavy against Felix’s wrists, against his heart, against every recklessly sacrificed sanguine drip, laden with the weight of words that will now never find voice—woven rope, rancid sweat, insidious fury drag him further and further into the ground, and the earth swallows him whole. 

It’s too late for last wishes. The skies will never clear again, burned and buried with ash and hellfire and hatred. 

_Forge your own path. Live by your own blade._

Was this that path, that choice?

The thought is bitter and stale on his tongue, iron and iron and _blood_ in every choked swallow of air. 

Felix could not forgive, yet he could not forget. His heart, his weakness—they led him down this road to a miserable, prideless end. To Dimitri’s promised eternal flames. They flicker, smoldering against the edges of his consciousness, licking away a little more with each pulse of red, cruel emotion; his love drips away. 

But that is not regret. 

Love is a sickness, Felix caught in its fever, and it courses through him as forcefully as the raging blaze set the once-placid grasses of Gronder—

It is not regret, but it is also not enough.

Felix can fight, _will_ fight—so long as he draws breath. He will not be weak, will not give way. So long as that empty ache still craves to save the prince from the beast carving its way through his being, Felix must rise to once more to find his place at his king’s right. Together (always together), side by side, hand brushing hand, they march forward on the only path they can ever know. 

Stand. _Rise_ , damn it.

Felix weakly flexes his fingers, his sword so close—too far. He turns his head, eyes searching for a sign.

In the distance, a figure in blue falls red, and twin wounded cries echo in the battlefield. 

* * *

War in Faerghus is cold. It is wet. This, they tell you. It is written in every storybook, recalled in every touted tale, extolled in every dramatic recounting of the exploits of Loog and Kyphon. War is cold, war is wet, but to the victors go the spoils, and to the loyal and true go the honor and glory.

What they don’t say is that the cold starts from the inside, a spider’s web spun of anger, of selfish loathing, of desperate atonement in any shape it might come—it freezes you limb by limb, radiating from your icy, wrought-iron heart.

For five years, Felix fights. Fights the cold. Fights the Empire. 

Fights himself. 

The first year is the worst. The witch in Fhirdiad shows her true colors—red and black in Fhirdiad, red and black knocking at Fraldarius, red and black staining Felix’s face and hands. Rodrigue storms his way to Areadbhar—all loyalty to a dead king and brazen disregard for his duty to the many—emerging short almost a hundred good soldiers, lance and regalia for a disappeared prince his only prize.

 _He is not dead,_ sobs Felix’s heart, _I would know it._

 _He is not worth chasing,_ says Felix’s head, _it is what I’ve said for years._

Felix leaves at dawn with Rodrigue’s blessing and the fastest horse in Fraldarius. 

He goes south, skirting the capital, loses days wandering the Tailtean Plains for a sign. They are empty and peaceful, yet untouched by war, no prince to be found.

He follows east, searching for news in Galatea and Charon. Ingrid tells him to go home and defend Fraldarius from the traitorous enchantress. He refuses.

He travels north, the winter rough and biting against his skin, worse here than even his Faerghus-grown bones can stand. Sylvain dons heavy armor and boisterously offers Felix a drink. Felix tells him to get serious. 

He sneaks west, careful in enemy territory. He loses the horse in an ambush. He interrogates an Imperial soldier and learns nothing.

The trail of the boar fades into smoke. 

Weeks and days and months blur, cold and cold, blood red and frigid blue, drowned in war’s carmine rivers and never-ending chill. The hunt is futile, never-ending—

A rash of guilt chafes at the back of Felix’s mind, calling him home to the front.

One year, three months, and twelve days after he leaves Fraldarius, he arrives once more at the manor (dirty, bloody, without a horse) with a yawning ache eating him from the inside out. Rodrigue greets him, all deep frown and empty concern—his words and gentle tone mask disappointment, hide anger at Felix’s failure.

_One year, three months, and twelve days wasted._

In the four years that follow, the pain gnawing its bloody way through his gut only deepens and turns darker, clawing and molding insides until there’s nothing left but hate and red. Burgundy and cardinal and cinnabar and garnet, all shades blending together to run and run and run, each droplet leaden as it falls from his blade. Time stretches, and the cold of war sinks so deep in Felix’s bones that he knows that even when he makes it out of this war (when, not if, because he will be stronger than Faerghus and he will not be lost in the way of countless generations before), he’ll always be looking for the next enemy to cut out of his way. 

Ingrid and Sylvain flit in and out of battlefields, her judgmental glare scalding, his false laughter grating—warm moments of what another might have called camaraderie lay frigid in the wake of the gaping emptiness in their presence. 

Two years after the fall of Garreg Mach, Mercedes arrives to heal the sick and wounded. 

A year further and Annette disappears with only a single word: father. 

On an overcast and wretched day, Ashe is spotted across a battlefield near Rowe territory, and Felix’s weak heart keeps him further east and north after that.

The worn-down remnants of their class wait and wait and wait for any sign of the boar (of _Dimitri_ , his once-friend, his prince, his one and true lo—) and his man, moons and season and cycles passing as they pray for a whisper.

The circles under their eyes deepen.

Time passes, and one battle becomes ten becomes many. Felix stops counting his enemies, even when the others don’t.

Four years pass at the head of the Fraldarius troops, a haze of scarlet.

And then, the boar lets himself be found.

* * *

Rodrigue refuses to give up the search for Dimitri, even after Felix comes home with less than he left with and nary a clue left to chase. The old man’s endless optimism that they can find the boar and end the war is as disgusting as it is an embarrassing reflection of emotions Felix isn’t ready to unearth. He can’t let himself hope, he can’t _rely_ on hope; the only trust worth having is in his sword and the edge that it cuts with, so he refuses to let the blossom in his chest bloom the way Rodrigue nurtures his own blind faith.

Except, the hope grows anyway, and it flowers the day Ingrid arrives with rumors, Sylvain showing up at their doorstep not too long after with Mercedes trailing behind him. 

There are murmurs that a person with green starlight hair was seen walking into the monastery not two months prior. Stories that, more recently, known Knights of Seiros were seen congregating back at those storied halls.

And somewhere near the border of Charon, a one-man army has carved swathes into a few Imperial troops not too far from Garreg Mach.

It’s not the first such rumor. They’ve led to dead ends before, every chase turning up another charred and stained battlefield but no monster in the form of a prince. There’s been chase after chase, but Felix’s traitorous, selfish heart beats quicker anyway, his want faster than his wisdom, and he suddenly finds himself volunteered once more to wander the woods and fields in search of a man who may have joined his ghosts. 

This time, though, Ingrid, Sylvain, and Mercedes go with him.

* * *

On the edge of the field, caked in red and brown and blue, a hunched figure sits, arms encircling a battered, silver lance still dangling entrails and grit. 

Revulsion rises in Felix’s stomach and he fights the urge to visibly retch. Perhaps he should have wondered about what he might find should his search succeed, but he’s always heard that he’s too driven, too fixated, too single-minded, even as he never cared for the criticism. Maybe this is that blessed focus turned into a curse.

Mercedes approaches the boar first, her hand gentle and careful as she crouches, like the beast might be skittish if she advances too suddenly. 

When it’s his turn, Sylvain doles out his smiles, awkward and forced, and cacophonously fills the air with sugary, sickly laughter. A fool through and through. He makes levity where none can be found, ever playing the court jester. 

A little ways away, Ingrid stands, wavering only the slightest bit before driving in her resolve, firm and stoic and unbending as she waits and waits for her king to unfurl and rise. She’ll be waiting a long time. 

Felix scoffs and turns, an uncomfortable twisting in his throat (in his heart) as he flexes fingers desperately aching to extend, and he surveys the damage around him. The battlefield is brutal, _scorched_ , rent asunder by the hate and vengeance that surges through a vessel more suited to kindness. The wreckage of a monster unearthed from a prince once thought unfit for cruelty.

The boar sneers and snarls, bracing against its lance as it pushes onto its hind legs and stares down at them all. A gaunt figure, a hulking one—it leers, voice hoarse as it speaks of Enbarr and heads rolling.

Five years and nothing has changed. And yet, five years and _everything_ has changed. 

* * *

The relieved smile turning Rodrigue’s lips speaks volumes, and something curdles in the pit of Felix’s stomach. There’s a clap against the boar’s shoulder, a bow of misplaced loyalty, an oath sworn to another empty ideal.

The Lone Moon wanes as they gather in Fraldarius territory, its dying light their sole beacon. Rodrigue barters for the retaking of Fhirdiad—for the true return of Faerghus’s king. But a beast cannot hear human speech, and the monster growls only of Enbarr, words few and low; its face is still the same sunken, sallow mess as when it had been found, its strength drawn only from its Crest, all human sustenance refused. 

They march. Not first to Fhirdiad, despite what prudence dictates, but to Enbarr.

The ambush as they approach Blaiddyd and the Tailtean Plains is almost inevitable—it is the easiest route, the safest passage for a guard as large as theirs, and it would be unwise not to take it. An army gathering to the north is not quiet. It is not subtle, and the wicked witch is cunning and clever. She awaits them, the citizenry of Fhirdiad dyed her crimson as they quake before their king. The conscripted traitors fight as Faerghan soldiers only know: to the death, with all honor to their liege. 

The battle at Tailtean ends, but Cornelia retreats to her claimed fortress in Fhirdiad, baiting the boar with honeyed barbs, and like a senseless monster, it follows. Through familiar gates rise titans of steel and iron, lumbering and screeching as their blades carve the air. The mechanical Demonic Beasts strike fast and true, almost clever in their movements, and they guard the way to the usurper.

Felix carves his path through foe after foe, unerring with his sword as he cuts down enemy after enemy, darting and dodging as he disables monstrosity after monstrosity.

Fhirdiad is not a small city, and Felix loses sight of their banners as he leads his charge, marching ever forward. When he emerges from the dust, the boar lurches where he towers over the witch, a glimmer of humanity flickering in his eye. 

Rodrigue is not at his shoulder.

* * *

_Onward_ , Dimitri declares, growled grief and dark despair rippling their way through his voice. One lieutenant interred, another risen—Dedue looks wearily at them all from his place to the prince’s left.

Felix paces, one hand itching for a blade, the other searching for a nostalgic warmth. The Shield has never truly felt like his, and he is not of it. Nonetheless, the burden of its weight now lies heavy across his shoulders. 

A ribbon of hope runs in gossamer strands through their army, the sorrow given to the death of a lord dwarfed next joy granted by the return of a king. The man stands taller, though the beast still lurks, formless, behind empathy and amity.

_They are both me._

There’s laughter as Sylvain shoves him forward into his place at Dimitri’s right. 

Felix’s eyes meet his prince’s, and for an instant he sees warmth where only vengeance had laid before, and something stutters to a halt inside of him.

The moment passes and the shadow returns. 

Onward they march.

* * *

He pulls aside the man made of mourning and empathy so deep it burns into molten vengeance. “Your reckless foolishness will be the downfall of us all.”

 _Thank you,_ says a prince.

 _I cannot rest until I have her head,_ says a beast.

 _I won’t fall by another’s hand,_ says Dimitri, and a heaviness makes its way to Felix’s throat.

“The past is past. Don’t dwell on it. Fight for today. Today, I am at your side,” Felix sighs softly to the wind as he trails the would-be king back to camp.

* * *

The facade falls away, sloughing into the smoke as Areadbhar glows, a sickening lodestar to chase into bloody battle. Lúin, the Rafael Gem, the Aegis Shield, and the Lance of Ruin—in concert with Dimitri’s harsh light charging inexorably toward bright cardinal and horns of ram. 

_Kill every last one of them!_

The stone sinks in Felix’s heart, and it weeps, chasing memories of round cheeks and wide eyes and bright optimism. Each heavy, menacing step onto Gronder Field layers another icy lashed chain around the wrought-iron cage of his chest, and he readies his sword. 

To the northeast, a figure of green and white exchanges looks with a mass of gold and red atop a wyvern, a single nod passing between them, and the fight begins in earnest. 

Colors blur—Adrestia’s red, Faerghus’s blue, Leicester’s yellow—from one body to the next, friendly and adversarial alike, all awash in the tide of death surging through the war, coming to a head in this grotesque mockery of a once-trite tradition.

In every step, in every turn, in every rough, biting stab—Felix looks for bluest blue. His sight is occluded by the destruction rising from the ground, but his heart points true north, and he follows, always one pace too many away.

He can make out the ballista when a half-remembered, half-divine specter halts him. A sword of bone to meet his ill-fitted shield. 

Byleth looks at Felix, pity and remorse in a once-emotionless face, and Felix bares his teeth.

This is no time for words, if the other ever had any.

Felix swings, the years of training and war surging into every strike as he fights his way through the Professor to once more trail toward his king’s side. It is not an easy role, steeped as it is in generations upon generations of memory, and a rough shove is not enough to hold him in place, but it is _his_ place.

It always has been.

At Dimitri’s side, to victory.

Even as he’s shunned it, it is his place and he must take it.

Felix’s footwork is made shoddy by the blazing furnace around them, and he slips, the Sword of the Creator striking hard and true. He falls and falls and falls, arcing away and choking on sanguine red, and the dull thud of his body finding ground rattles bitterly through his core.

His sword. Where is his sword?

Byleth leaves him with a sad, backward glance before turning forward again on their path, letting him dissolve into the ash of their past.

His place. It hovers out of grasp, a pace too far from where he lays prone.

Is this regret?

It’s hard to breathe.

His body has almost nothing left to weep, but it wracks with the sobs of years, his eyes desperately searching for a love and childhood lost.

Felix watches a figure in blue fall red, and he sinks back to the ground with a choked cry, defeated.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not gonna turn on my location, but you can find me on twitter [@euphemeas](https://twitter.com/euphemeas).


End file.
